J Busser wrote: > Would you have produced any (even crude) introductory or background > description for the minister to consider? I was hoping / thinking it > could be the kind of thing worth sharing around further as my own region > is in the early stages of working on secure messaging. > > Could not find much about wagtail. Is it a larger project i.e. beyond > yourselves? Other than wagtail birds and cleaning supplies, all I could > find was an audio encoding project > http://freshmeat.net/projects/wagtail/ > > maybe bears a relation to BAE Systems being the" design authority for... > existing fielded, Australian tactical communications equipment including > RAVEN and WAGTAIL combat net radio" > http://www.baesystems.com/newsroom/2002/apr/170402news2.htm
Tony Lembke named the project after Rhipidura leucophrys, I think - see http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/nature_conservation/wildlife/native_animals/nocturnal_animals/birds/willy_wagtail/ Australia already has an open source secure health messaging system called ArgusConnect, which as Horst says is fighting a rear-guard action against proprietary pay-per-message secure health messaging service providers. ArgusConnect has had some wins, including support from a large path lab company, but its position is still shaky. ArgusConnect has some features which don't enamour it to everyone, such as a) being completely dependent on the HeSA PKI - which is an X.509 PKI operated by an agency of our Federal govt, but which insists on users signing inappropriate legal agreements and on the use of proprietary hardware dongles etc; b) it doesn't support alternative X.509 or GPG/PGP PKIs, which are preferred by some because they are good enough to get the job of secure health messaging done satisfactorily without teh considerable bureaucratic or legal overhead which HeSA has - and thus may be more sustainable than HeSA, which is vulnerable to a flick of the finance minister's pen, I dare say; c) the ArgusConnect software itself is a bit over-engineered, although it does work well in its more recent versions; d) related to c), it is written in Java and is not that easy to extend, although Syan managed to crack it; e) the open source version lags 6 months behind the version that ArgusConnect (teh company) distributes in binary form and for which they provide support for a fee. Wagtail, if I understand correctly, is intended to address all these issues. I think the idea is to complement ArgusConnect and provide even more choice for open secure health messaging, rather than to try to usurp ArgusConnect. Indeed, it would be great if ArgusConnect (the company) eventually provided commercial support contracts for Wagtail as well as for their own software product. The real targets are the proprietary health messaging providers. A secondary goal is, I think, to demonstrate that "good enough" health informatics facilities can in fact be created and deployed at very modest expense - all that is needed is some vision and some smarts, but not necessarily a lot of time or money. Tim C > > At 10:18 PM +0000 9/5/05, Horst Herb wrote: > >> Both Syan and me are currently active with "wagtail". It has highest >> priority >> for a reason: Australia is sitting on the fence between open and >> proprietary >> lock in situation for clinical secure messaging. A few companies >> hoping for >> lucrative customer lock-in contracts from the government are lobbying >> away, >> and the health minister is hellbound at making the final decision this >> very >> year. >> >> Tony Lemke, Syan, and I are trying to produce something workable soon as >> possible; something we can demonstrate that it *works* as a free and >> standards respecting alternative to costly lock in. Needless to say, the >> secure messaging application can certainly be integrated into gnumed >> and will >> be useful there too. >> >> You can follow progress or even contribute at >> http://ozdocit.org/websvn/listing.php?repname=wagtail&path=%2F&sc=0 > > > > _______________________________________________ > Gnumed-devel mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnumed-devel > _______________________________________________ Gnumed-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnumed-devel
